2daMoon
Mostly Harmless
Looking at that compact portable briefcase phone reminded me just how revolutionary Agent 86's Shoe Phone was...
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Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable
- Thread starter AudubonB
- Start date
Looking at that compact portable briefcase phone reminded me just how revolutionary Agent 86's Shoe Phone was...
2daMoon
Mostly Harmless
It is my understanding that the folks in D.C. had proposed implementing some measure originally used in wartime, to now speed up mining of materials and production of batteries under the need for domestic production as a National Security measure. Thus relieving dependency upon other nations for key resources.
If so, perhaps they could use this "National Security" lever to shortcut the stifling red tape that delays mine startups by a decade or more.
It is easy to understand how the regulations in place were needed to prevent greedy, filthy bastiges from destroying the environment with many of the more damaging mining methods, including those for fossil fuels. However, it seems a reasonable argument to fast-track scaling up mining for lithium and other battery basics with the understanding that these industries will displace many, if not most of the types of mining that were the foundation for these rules that currently prevent new projects from coming online in a timely manner.
The line separating the good mining from the bad should be easy enough to define and regulate so as to keep making it difficult for any miners not contributing to a renewable future. Enhancing those operations where, once a certain level of production is achieved, recycling can replace a significant percentage of fast-tracked mining operations in a decade or two. Thus, killing two birds with one stone by preventing more fossil fuel mining and tapering renewable mining efforts over the long term.
Seems like a no-brainer to me. Which is probably why it will never happen as many of those who vote on it are also no-brainers. So to speak.
The Accountant
Active Member
I made this prediction 2 months ago. The upcoming TSLAQ talking point: decreasing wait times indicates demand is falling.
After watching This video about how Gordon Johnson only Rates companies he think will fail or drop, I no longer bother giving his words a glance, much less try to debunk or dispute. He will NEVER flip. He will just stop talking about Tesla eventually.
Written in 2019...
"The whole point of growing renewables has been to drive down their cost. The actual amount of solar and wind that policies have deployed up until now is almost immaterially small. It just isn’t enough to matter. What matters is that policies up until now have driven down the cost of solar, wind, and energy storage by more than an order of magnitude.
If those policies – and the fact that renewables are now competitive for new power even without subsidies in the sunny and windy parts of the world – continue for long enough for renewables to drop another factor of 2 or 3 in price – on top of the factor of 10 or more that they’ve fallen already, then we’ll enter a new domain where renewable growth rates aren’t determined by fickle policy. Instead, they’ll be limited only by the pace at which renewables can be deployed – the pace at which factories for solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries can be built; the pace at which labor forces can be trained to deploy them; the pace at which capital can be deployed to pay for their installation.
How fast is that? I have no idea. But there’s good reason to believe that in this second and third phase of renewables, the growth rate will accelerate rather than slowing. We will look back and see that the growth of renewables is an S-curve to be sure."
rameznaam.com
"The whole point of growing renewables has been to drive down their cost. The actual amount of solar and wind that policies have deployed up until now is almost immaterially small. It just isn’t enough to matter. What matters is that policies up until now have driven down the cost of solar, wind, and energy storage by more than an order of magnitude.
If those policies – and the fact that renewables are now competitive for new power even without subsidies in the sunny and windy parts of the world – continue for long enough for renewables to drop another factor of 2 or 3 in price – on top of the factor of 10 or more that they’ve fallen already, then we’ll enter a new domain where renewable growth rates aren’t determined by fickle policy. Instead, they’ll be limited only by the pace at which renewables can be deployed – the pace at which factories for solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries can be built; the pace at which labor forces can be trained to deploy them; the pace at which capital can be deployed to pay for their installation.
How fast is that? I have no idea. But there’s good reason to believe that in this second and third phase of renewables, the growth rate will accelerate rather than slowing. We will look back and see that the growth of renewables is an S-curve to be sure."
The Third Phase of Clean Energy Will Be the Most Disruptive Yet
Building new solar, wind, and storage is about to be cheaper than operating existing coal and gas power plants. That will change everything. When the history of how humanity turned the corner on climate change is
rameznaam.com
exactly.
wait times long = production sucks = no profits
wait times short= no demand
talk about an echo chamber
2daMoon
Mostly Harmless
Written in 2019...
"The whole point of growing renewables has been to drive down their cost. The actual amount of solar and wind that policies have deployed up until now is almost immaterially small. It just isn’t enough to matter. What matters is that policies up until now have driven down the cost of solar, wind, and energy storage by more than an order of magnitude.
If those policies – and the fact that renewables are now competitive for new power even without subsidies in the sunny and windy parts of the world – continue for long enough for renewables to drop another factor of 2 or 3 in price – on top of the factor of 10 or more that they’ve fallen already, then we’ll enter a new domain where renewable growth rates aren’t determined by fickle policy. Instead, they’ll be limited only by the pace at which renewables can be deployed – the pace at which factories for solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries can be built; the pace at which labor forces can be trained to deploy them; the pace at which capital can be deployed to pay for their installation.
How fast is that? I have no idea. But there’s good reason to believe that in this second and third phase of renewables, the growth rate will accelerate rather than slowing. We will look back and see that the growth of renewables is an S-curve to be sure."
The Third Phase of Clean Energy Will Be the Most Disruptive Yet
Building new solar, wind, and storage is about to be cheaper than operating existing coal and gas power plants. That will change everything. When the history of how humanity turned the corner on climate change is
This is why I'm not particularly concerned with waiting on legislators to help. The basic economics of renewables alone will establish and bolster the trend toward a Borg-like assimilation of the existing energy structure. This will be happening as represented with an exponential S-Curve that will rise much too quickly for entrenched energy lobbyist and power-mongers to react fast enough to save themselves.
Renewables have reached the point where it is better to join in than to fight the momentum.
Like the railroad companies did to pivot themselves into a position of growth and strength when aviation began to displace them for passenger service. Oh, never mind.
The old guard are doomed to live on subsidized life support, if they are allowed to live at all.
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In the US, it costs 3x capitol expense for financing + installation of home solar. Certainly not the solar farm ratio possible, but that seems like opportunity knocking for non-commercial.
In an emergency, I could see a solar kit offering, ground based (lean against your wall crazy simple, wire into some heater coils) - EU heat this winter anyone? No inverter, no roof install, just a kit and a regulator for power delivery. I know I’d be ordering panels now in a similar situation.
petit_bateau
Active Member
When you shut in an oil & ges well, it is shut tight. Nothing comes out. (unless you've four or five valves that have all failed - SSSV, LMGV, UMGV, FWV, CHK). The same is true irrespective of whether it is a pure gas well, or whether it is an oil well with associated gas. Most of these Russian fields are high GOR oil wells with lots of associated gas that 'fizzes' out of solution as the oil goes from reservoir pressure to atmospheric pressure during the production process.
Not quite. What is going on here is that the Russians are flowing these wells in order to obtain the resulting oil production, which they then sell. But since they haven't got a pipeline to put the associated gas into they have to flare (or worse still, vent) the associated gas to dispose of it. Since 80-90% of the cashflow comes from selling the oil that is still good business for the Russians. (Some fields can do gas reinjection back into the reservoirs, but not most Russian fields).
Indeed, and we should be thankful they are flaring rather than venting, as the CO2 from the flare is somewhat better than the CH4 from venting, in greenhouse gas terms.
Prolonged however, high rate flaring like this, will likely damage the flaring facilities in time. At which point (knowing the Russians) they will probably use flare facilities as vents. That can go wrong ...
Same goes on all over Russa, always has done,
(not just in Russia, but they are one of the bigger culprits .... so too is USA, KSA, Nigeria ..... no-one has completely clean hands with this stuff)
@betstarshipWritten in 2019...
"The whole point of growing renewables has been to drive down their cost. The actual amount of solar and wind that policies have deployed up until now is almost immaterially small. It just isn’t enough to matter. What matters is that policies up until now have driven down the cost of solar, wind, and energy storage by more than an order of magnitude.
If those policies – and the fact that renewables are now competitive for new power even without subsidies in the sunny and windy parts of the world – continue for long enough for renewables to drop another factor of 2 or 3 in price – on top of the factor of 10 or more that they’ve fallen already, then we’ll enter a new domain where renewable growth rates aren’t determined by fickle policy. Instead, they’ll be limited only by the pace at which renewables can be deployed – the pace at which factories for solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries can be built; the pace at which labor forces can be trained to deploy them; the pace at which capital can be deployed to pay for their installation.
How fast is that? I have no idea. But there’s good reason to believe that in this second and third phase of renewables, the growth rate will accelerate rather than slowing. We will look back and see that the growth of renewables is an S-curve to be sure."
The Third Phase of Clean Energy Will Be the Most Disruptive Yet
Building new solar, wind, and storage is about to be cheaper than operating existing coal and gas power plants. That will change everything. When the history of how humanity turned the corner on climate change is
I keep posting these graphs, using 10 year growth rates of wind and solar renewables, since you asked "who knows", well anyone can make reasonable extrapolations based on historical data and growth rates
the graphs get "silly" exponential sometime in mid 2040's or so as growth rate _should_ slow
also, PV was about $100/watt in 1974 so its more a factor of >100+x, not 10x
(I recommend "The Peace War" by Vernor Vinge for light reading)
data file included in excel format
I've thought that instead of an exponential, its just a long s-curve as we go off planet and space becomes a market.
well, those graphs are a cursory glance at the data, not in depth analysis, lots of stumbling points.,
but you are correct, as cost of PV becomes nominal, virtually zero marginal.
The EU already has the concept of "balcony PV":
1-2 panels with a 600/800 Watt inverter can be installed and simply plugged into any adequate home-outlet with minimal administration.
Costs ~800-1500€
Delivery Times 2+ months and rising...
Any unused Power will be fed back to the grid for free.
Now a completely crazy idea:
Some government invests €2B to order these packages in bulk. Then resells them for 50% off.
~1.5GW perfectly distributed power generation for €1B
Any takers?
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petit_bateau
Active Member
It won't help in Dec/Jan/Feb which is the pinch months. Of the new renewables only wind helps in those months, plus the old renewables (hydro) and of course nuclear and fossils.
This is the issue that the pro-solar lobby never want to face up to. Wind of course also means big grid transmission links, and big battery storage schemes, in order to provide the requisite despatchibility in those critical winter months.
This is the same issue worldwide in all temeperate locations where humans live.
So .... over-investing in solar is the ultimate wasted investment.
Emotionally good, technically less so.
(and historically the Baviarian NIMBYs have vetoed Germam attempts to do the necessary, and the corresponding voters in other countries)
There are certainly places in the world where solar makes a lot of sense like the southwestern US where peak energy demand coincides with peak solar energy production as well as having good electric grid infrastructure. The Sahara desert isn't a good choice the latter reason (and dust storms). Cold wintery and overcast Germany is a particularly poor place for solar. Wind isn't great there either.
The belief that solar could replace nuclear is why you have the environmental disaster of German brown coal (a particularly dirty type) being burned at record rates. Ah well, at least you can say, it isn't the worst government decision Germans have made...
(And sorry for dumping on Germany, no country is exempt from stupid political decisions).
Edit: By the way, there are ways to store energy between seasons. Pumped hydro is one. And large such installations exist in the world. It just takes time and planning to build.
Sam Abuelsamid is the guy who made that obnoxious graph putting Tesla way behind all others in autonomous approach.
Now he's claiming Tesla can't figure out the size of objects with their camera positions.
Turns out Sam doesn’t know jack about computer vision.
Now he's claiming Tesla can't figure out the size of objects with their camera positions.
Turns out Sam doesn’t know jack about computer vision.
Of course it's not the solution for the complete grid, but:
- Even during winter, peak consumption tends to happen during the day.
- Modern PV panels are surprisingly good in diffuse lighting conditions, so they're not too far off peak power even in overcast weather.
- Vertically mounted panels on balconies are better angled for winter production than many roof top installations.
- These packages usually oversize the panels to reach the inverter limit for a longer time.
- Even at a third of peak power you can still shave of a peaker plant worth of energy demand.
- It's the only short term solution which is scalable without being severely limited by labor capacity.
- Even if doesn't completely solve the winter power shortages, it would be a significant reduction in net demand for the next 20+ years.
- The current issue is scale and organization. Most of these packages are offered by small companies/individuals in countless variations. One-size, or three-size fits all bought in bulk could greatly compress the cost structure.
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lafrisbee
Active Member
Yep, only one obvious resource is how most "successful" companies acquire money. /S
Mods? How big an EFFIN "S" could I put there before I'd get a warning?
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